Weekly News Update
- Ask a Manager answered a reader's question about getting called out for wearing the same dress to work every day.
- Vox's The Goods shared an ode to the tote bag.
- The New York Times gave advice on how to answer questions about your salary requirements.
- The New York Times also reported on employers who are offering wristbands or pins that signal employees' comfort level with social distancing, masking, and shaking hands.
- Well+Good highlighted the results of a new study that found that people of color feel a greater sense of belonging under flexible work models (such as working remotely or combining in-person and remote work).
- The Charlotte Observer reported on a lawsuit charging that an employer violated the ADA by firing an autistic woman for “unprofessional” communication.
- The Conversation created a chart that shows the risk of catching COVID in various situations according to activity, ventilation, face covering, and high- or low-occupancy conditions.
- The Wall Street Journal noted that people who test positive for COVID and are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms still shouldn't go to the gym (or work out anywhere else).
- The Atlantic reviewed the new book Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World.
- Your Laugh of the Week comes from McSweeney's, with “Please, World, In a Time of Infinite Darkness, Just Let Us Have Wordle.”
On CorporetteMoms Recently…
- We rounded up the best books for pregnancy and working motherhood.
- We offered some clothes for working moms, including some maternity basics and washable workwear.
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Cam we talk about the AAM letter from the woman who wore the same dress (not the same dress bought in different colours, nor the same dress she had in copies, the same dress) for 37 days?
Sure… if it’s clean, who cares. The office busybody needs to mind her own business. Nobody would think twice if it was a man doing it.
I personally would… if people don’t ever change their outfits, you do start to wonder whether they’re changing. At least switch it up once a week!
(I say this as someone who repeats outfits very regularly on a cyclical schedule).
I think most people would – at least switch it up once a week! You can tell that they’re different outfits – e.g. different shirt colours (hence different shirts), different jacket materials…
I’d probably find it a bit weird if someone never changed – and I say this as the female equivalent of the man who owns the same outfit in different colours.
Oops – it double posted. :/
I think Alison was off on the answer to that one. The woman was literally wearing the same garment daily. As she was making the point about men wearing similar outfits, she missed the point that they aren’t wearing literally the same shirt and pants daily.
TBH I used to be a regular AAM reader and now just pop over periodically. Whoever said the other day that it’s jumped the shark with the onslaught of bizarre letters over the last year or two – spot on.
This is where I am. If the woman bought five copies of the same navy dress, she would have gotten s different reaction.
I’ve worn a capsule wardrobe for at least a decade and no one says anything. Wore the same six outfits when I was pregnant and people at work only said how nice I looked and how put-together I looked.
When I was in grad school 20 years ago, a post-doc in my lab commented that I wore different clothes each day. He immigrated to the US at 12, I think. So don’t forget that you look at the world through your own cultural biases.
If the woman didn’t smell, if she washed her dress on a reasonably regular basis, then her boss was way off mark. He needed to provide a rationale reasonably related to her job requirements and did not. If no customer complained, no co-worker was impacted and she did her job, then Jan is a meddling busybody. “Hygiene” as a rationale is a concept loaded with bias against POC and different economic status.
She was spot cleaning the same dress over 37 days. I’d stink a bit after 2. Maybe 3 if I had low stress and optimal temperature the entire time. That’s not a capsule wardrobe or POC issue (in some ways, kind of offensive to try to make it that). That’s a “you are wearing dirty clothes and stink while in a public-facing role” sort of problem. If I were in an office with a coworker like that, I’d honestly be worried about her mental health and if there was severe depression going on.
The OPs comment says that she was hand-washing her dress every 3-5 days, so not spot cleaning but cleaning the whole garment.
Whether that is enough or not really depends on the person. Some people truly sweat very little, and wool truly does keep stink away. There’s a reason why airing out and steaming wool is appropriate cleaning. Wool garments often get grubby at the pits because of a reaction with antiperspirant rather than sweat. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t be one of the people who don’t stink, I think.
Personally, I’m a sweaty one, so I would never do a challenge like this, but I think there’s neither harm or mental illness going on, just a nosy busybody colleague. I remember this challenge being introduced years back, and think it’s an interesting one, but I’m not the least bit tempted.
She bought a $135 dress and a whole slew of accessories to go with it. This isn’t about someone wearing clothes that are traditional to their heritage, an intern cobbling together a professional wardrobe, or a woman back from maternity leave wearing the same 4 outfits as she rebuilds her work wardrobe in her new size. She is just flouting cultural norms for a $100 gift card.
I think the idea is that the dress is some sort of wool, which tends to not smell like synthetics do. If she had a car commute, was sitting all day, driving home, then taking the dress off, I imagine you could get quite a few days of wear without washing it.
In grad school one of our post docs wore the same thing everyday, and we KNEW it. He was a regular white guy, so it wasn’t a cultural thing, although I think the guy did have some issues. It wasn’t great to work next to him in the summer.
If the dress woman doesn’t smell or look visibly dirty, I don’t know why anyone would bother caring.
They talked to her about her “hygiene.” But even if it is limited to impacting her image at work, I think that it’s probably reasonable to change your dress/wash it more often than to die on this hill. I also think you’ve effectively lost the challenge if people think you smell or otherwise need help. Even if it were a cultural issue, which it doesn’t seem to be, letting her know that people do notice & it’s not the norm at their workplace seems like a kind (and not rage-inspiring) thing to do.
I’m confused about what hygiene has anything to do with people a POC. What are you getting at?
What the commenter is referring to is the use of “hygiene” as a reason for prohibiting traditional hairstyles such as dreadlocks that are perceived as “dirty”. Also, there are different personal hygiene standards around the world. This doesn’t seem to apply to the LW on ATM, but I don’t think she stated so explicitly. As someone who’s worn the same pair of black pants multiple times during a week while traveling, I’ll take her word that she’s cleaning the dress often enough that it doesn’t smell.
There’s also classism in other commenters’ assumption that she can just buy more dresses. The LW states that the dress was expensive for her, and one of the reasons she was doing the challenge was to be able to afford another dress.
Although it is classist to assume she can buy more, I don’t think classism or poverty is preventing the LW from having access to clothes. The LW did say that she does have other work outfits (at least in the comments if not the original letter), so even if she can’t afford another dress she could still rotate her outfits. Also the store credit she will receive for wearing the dress amounts to a dollar per day for 100 days … whereas if she loses her job or if this negatively effects her professional reputation—that could be much more costly. Besides which she can still win the contest even if she doesn’t wear the dress TO WORK every day.